After adding Oliver Kylington on Monday, the Colorado Avalanche now sit seven or eight deep on defense, depending on how you feel about Sam Malinski. Sure, a lot of those defensemen are very similar, as all but Josh Manson and Calvin de Haan are puck-moving defensemen who lack size, but the organization is deeper on defense today than they were a week ago.
That doesn’t mean they should go trading one of those blueliners for some help up front.
Not yet, at least.
Over the years, I’ve been told by many fans that the Avalanche need to trade Sam Girard. It’s like an auto-response to many when a goal goes in while he’s on the ice. After the Kylington signing on Monday, those folks were back, although they probably never left.
I get it. The Avalanche have a lot of undersized defensemen right now, and Girard would easily have the most value in a trade. There’s a reason for that, though. He’s better (and more proven) than all of the depth defensemen the Avalanche have brought in, and until we see something that shows otherwise, trading him would prove to be very risky.
Kylington, who is still just 27 years old, certainly fits the mold of the prototypical Avalanche defenseman. There were rumblings that he was looking for some term from the Calgary Flames this summer. That obviously didn’t happen, and I’m not sure you can blame the Flames for not wanting to commit to him long-term. He had a tremendous season back in 2021-22 when he spent the majority of his time on the ice stapled to Chris Tanev, but that’s really his only “good” season in the NHL.
Having stepped away from the league to take care of his mental health after that breakout season, he has played just 33 NHL games over the last two years. And in those 33 games, he didn’t exactly look great, as his possession numbers were down near the bottom when compared to the 15 (15!) defensemen Calgary had to use last season. If he finds that 21-22 form again, maybe it opens up the option to trade Girard for help up front, but that’s a big if.
The same can be said for Erik Brannstrom. Listen, I like Brannstrom, and I have for years, but I want to see how he performs on a good team first. Ottawa sure as heck wasn’t a good team. There’s an expectation inside that locker room of how everyone has to perform, and while I’m confident Brannstrom can do it, seeing is believing. This will be a very different environment than what he was used to in Ottawa.
The other addition to the Avalanche made this summer was bringing in the veteran de Haan. While he’s not a total bruiser like Manson, he is expected to fill a similar role on this defense, killing penalties and taking care of his own end. He’s been pretty good at that over the course of his career, but he’s also really struggled to stay on the ice. Injuries have always been an issue for him, and when you employ someone like that, you should probably be keeping defensemen as opposed to trading them away.
And no, I’m not open to the idea of trading Josh Manson, as things currently stand. He has his flaws, but with the way the Avalanche blueline is built, he’s the only one that brings something a little different to the table.
Depth on defense is never a bad thing, and while waivers may prove to be an issue come the start of October, that’s a problem for another day. For now, the Avalanche should stay patient and let things play out when training camp rolls around. The new guys have to show they can hang before I’d feel comfortable moving out a proven top four defenseman.
